


Caught In The Crossfire

by saplingsparrow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Implied Mycroft/Lestrade - Freeform, Murder, OOC John, Protective Sherlock, Rosie the amateur detective, Sherlock is a great parent, Slow Burn, Teenage Rosie, slow burn johnlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saplingsparrow/pseuds/saplingsparrow
Summary: Rosie Watson is just like any other teenage girl. Almost. She constantly lives in a murder mystery and has an unusual definition of family, but she makes it work. That is, until Rosie discovers a dark secret and her life goes spiralling out of control...No Final Problem or Eurus because I didn’t know how to deal with that.





	Caught In The Crossfire

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction (eek!) so any and all feedback is welcome. I’m really looking forward to share my work, but none of it is beta’d, just so you know. If you see any errors, please point them out.

‘A strange way to raise a child’, people would say when they found out about my family. Yet to me, it was the only normal I had never known. Of course, I had a mum once, but she died when I was little and Dad doesn’t like to talk about it. Sherlock told me what happened after I nagged him for weeks, and I could see the pain in his eyes when he told me. I guess it hurt him too. I regretted asking almost immediately. Still, it made a welcome change from the stony silence I got from Dad. He would just sit there, and _hurt._ That stopped me asking. 

Dad's funny like that. He was in the army once, I have been told, but for how he acts he might as well have never left. He can be funny, and joke around, but he is always on guard. He sits up just a little too straight, laughs like he is preoccupied. And if he gets a fright, he just sort of snaps, jumps forward without being able to control it. I’ve sort of got used to it, but when people come round, they look at him like he’s done something wrong. Broken the rules of being human. You must always, always pretend you’re OK. 

He doesn’t control his temper well, either. Once I got into a fight at school, and he lost it. He said all sorts of horrible stuff about me and Sherlock and Mum, and he was shaking and his eyes were full of tears. I had never seen him like that before. It was awful. I was crying and he was crying and then Sherlock put his hand on his shoulder and everything stopped. Dad always says he takes care of Sherlock, but sometimes I think Sherlock takes care of him. 

I have never known life without Sherlock. He’s always been there, right from my first memory. He’s in every family photo, even the ones with Mum. We keep those right at the back of the drawer, so we don’t have to see Dad cry. Sherlock hates it too. He’s always looked after me, taught me things (often things he shouldn’t) and he’s like a second dad. I think he should be. I can see it in the way Dad looks at him. 

Dad loves me, mostly, but I think I remind him of Mum a bit too much. I look a lot like her. I have her blue eyes and curly blonde hair, but I try to grow it out so it doesn’t look like hers did. Sherlock, however, loves me always. When I snuck back into the flat after a party and I was a tiny bit tipsy, he didn’t tell Dad and helped me get back to bed before anyone noticed. Dad jokes that I'm the first person he’s ever really loved, but that’s not true. Sherlock looks at him the same way Dad looks at Sherlock.

Sherlock's brilliant, but he can be a bit weird. He’s a detective (a consulting detective, he says) and his cases take up his whole life. He squeezes us into a tiny corner of his mind, and Dad gets more space because he's been in it longer and helps him with cases. It’s quite annoying being third best. Third with Dad, too, because Sherlock's first and Mum’s second, even though she’s dead. She was called Mary. She sounds brilliant. I wish I could have known her properly, but if I had I wouldn’t have as much of Sherlock. I suppose every cloud has a silver lining. Sherlock hates that saying because of scientific impossibility. Dad tells him not to take things so literally, and laughs that absent minded laugh. I love them both, but sometimes I think that if I was never born, things would be so much easier. 

I’m thirteen. It’s my fourteenth birthday next week. Sherlock and Dad are going off on a case tomorrow, to France for some reason, so I’ll be at Molly's. I love Molly, she’s my godmother and she works in a morgue, but it would still be nice to be with my family. I begged them to let me stay at home with Mrs Hudson checking up on me, but they were convinced I would set the place on fire so it’s off to Molly’s I go. It could be worse. I just wish they were there for my birthday. It’s kind of stupid, but I just miss them. And worry about them. They deal with murderers for a living so it’s almost inevitable they’ll get hurt sometime. Once, Sherlock trying to cheer a six year old me up (?) told me about a time when Dad nearly got shot by a serial killer (???). Safe to say, it gave me nightmares for months. 

 

I try not to think about this while I eat pasta at the kitchen table, twirling it around my fork as I sort the day's information away. Sherlock taught me how to do this. Dad never could get the hang of it. I pause midway through a very interesting internal debate about whether Kirsty’s relationship status will be relevant in the future. I am not quite sure why until I hear a noise. That must be what disrupted me. I rise slowly, careful not to make too much noise. I should be the only one in the house; Dad and Sherlock are on a case and won’t be back till late. The noise comes again- it is a voice. An angry voice. Yelling. 

“How could you let this happen? She is a child! You could have got her killed! She is not yours to sacrifice! God, how could you even- even think about putting her in danger? She is thirteen, for God’s sake, Sherlock!”

It is only then that I recognise the voice. It is Dad.

Suddenly my world comes crashing down. 

Sherlock and Dad are arguing. They never argue. Ever. 

They are arguing about me. 

Sherlock put me in danger. What sort of danger? How? Why? My mind is overheating with all these questions churning through it and is struggling to come up with any satisfactory answers. 

A door slams. 

I spring backwards as though I have been slapped. It feels like it. I turn, unsure of where to go. I can’t let them know I heard them, not yet, otherwise I will never find out what happened. I make a decision at the last possible moment and rush back to the table, picking up my fork and twirling it nonchalantly, attempting to regain a distant look on my face. I hear the door open behind me and struggle not to flinch when someone bangs it again. 

“Rosie-” Dad starts, but then realises I am busy. He sighs and I hear another door open and close. I am alone. 

I can’t hear Sherlock downstairs so he must have left again. He’s always doing that. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing half the time. The other half Dad tells me before he goes out. When I was little they’d take me out with them if they couldn’t find someone to look after me. The rest of the time I spent with Mrs Hudson, Molly at weekends, and various other acquaintances of Sherlock's. I spent one memorable summer when I was five with my sort of uncle Mycroft. Dad and Sherlock were on a super important case, Molly was away with her boyfriend and Mrs Hudson was visiting her sister in Devon, so Mycroft was the only option. Dad returned to find me watering the head of one of the most influential parliament officials with a pot of tea because “He didn’t have much hair so I wanted to grow him some”. I never stayed with Uncle Mycroft again. I’m pretty sure there was a whole big fuss about it and said official wasn’t best pleased. Occupational hazard of having an almost uncle who’s the government. 

I am brought back from the whirlpool of my thoughts by the sudden realisation that I need to work out what is going on immediately. I fidget in my chair for a few moments, trying to form the basic outlines of a plan, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I rush towards the door to his room. I open it gently, but he looks up straight away. Great. 

“Rosie? What is it, love?”

“Um... I was just wondering where Sherlock was?”

His face immediately hardens, but he evidently realises and relaxes a little, though the lines on his face are still more obvious.

“He left to do some work on a case. Anything I can help with?” 

“No, thanks. Just... you know... algebra...”

He nods, looking vaguely puzzled. It is not until I leave the room that I realise what an idiotic excuse that was. I was very obviously not doing homework when he walked past and besides, Sherlock is rubbish at algebra. And most homework stuff. He may be a genius, but he is surprisingly awful at basic maths. He deleted it from his brain, he says. I’m pretty sure that’s just his excuse.

I sit down on Sherlock’s armchair and sift through my deductions. I did not go into Dad’s room to ask where Sherlock was. He taught me how to read people when I was really little. He taught me lots of things, which is why I am top of my year (except in maths), but this was the most important. It means I can work out things without people telling me, which is incredibly helpful in many ways, now more than ever. 

Dad’s shoes were dirty, mud around the edges and probably on the soles too, with a few marks on the floor, but it’s not rained in a few days, so he must have been somewhere, well, muddy. There’s not a lot of places inside London; perhaps a skip or a construction site? Construction site seems more likely, and he’s got a bit of helmet hair so he probably had a hard hat on. Construction site it is then, but what sort of crime could it be? Murder? They solve a lot of murders. Maybe a body was found on a construction site? But the argument I heard sounded like it was from a longer term case, like a confrontation happened, so it was probably not the start. Unless it was unrelated? They did two cases at once? That’s not impossible. Perhaps the confrontation happened on the construction site? But confrontations are very rarely 100% legal, so I doubt Dad would bother wearing a hard hat. Also, he had what looked like a thread of fluorescent orange fabric on his shoulder so that just backs it up. So, what could it be? Two cases is looking likely. That doesn’t help me much. There’s not much more that doesn’t fit with the construction site; smudges of mud on the cuffs of his shirt, dirt under his fingernails, a small scrape on his hand. But there is one detail, one tiny thing that doesn’t fit with the rest. His watch hasn’t been taken off all day. There were no telltale red marks from the position changing, no debris on the clasp. The dial is still digging into his skin as it was this morning. If he visited a construction site, he would almost certainly have taken it off, and if he hadn’t, there would be mud on it. I can’t find a way around that one, and I sit in silence for a few moments before filing it as an unexplained factor. That’s how my brain works, files and lists and labels, like a computer. I’m not sure where that came from. Dad’s fairly ordinary, and from what I’ve been told Mum was too, so maybe it comes from spending so much time with Sherlock. I’m not sure about that though. I’m pretty sure it’s just hardwired somehow.

I am interrupted from my unusually chaotic brain by the sound of yet another door banging. I spin around to see Sherlock. I jump. He is standing, perfectly still, clothes immaculate, and he has a strange expression on his face. Something feels so wrong. I desperately try to work out what it is, what the tiny little niggling at the back of my mind is, but there is nothing to deduce. 

“Curious.” He mutters. 

He spots me.

“Watson!” He says with a smile, spotting me staring at him intently. I shake my head briskly, trying to snap myself out of deduction mode and back to normal.

“Sherlock! Hi! Um... where were you?” I ask, frantically searching for absolutely anything out of the ordinary. 

“On a case.” He says vaguely. Of course. Just what I need. More vagueness. 

“What case? Let me guess, murder?” I say, trying to resume my normal personality.

“Correct.” He says. The niggling feeling increases. Something is very off. But what, I just can’t place. 

“Oh.” I say. I try to appear calm, but my brain is running faster and faster and my eyes are moving with it, analysing everything about his appearance. I need to know what’s missing. 

“How was school?” he asks, and it takes me a moment to register the question. 

“Good, yeah, it was good.” I say, after what I realise was too long of a delay. Sherlock must know what I’m doing by now. I just need to stall for a few more seconds-

I spot something in the corner of my eye. Got it. 

He narrows his eyes at me. 

“Please stop deducing me, Rosamund. I presume you have found whatever it was you were looking for?” 

I do not respond. He turns away and begins to walk towards the fridge where he is doubtless storing some kind of odd experiment. 

“What were you and Dad arguing about?” I demand. 

He turns back to look at me, a sour expression on his face. 

“You heard that.”

“Yeah, you might want to get Dad to be a bit quieter when discussing sensitive information. I suppose that includes me, as I am evidently not to be trusted with my own life. You put me in danger. What kind of danger? Why? How? I want to know.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not? It’s me you apparently nearly got killed!” 

“I promised your father.”

“Promised him what? Why can’t you just tell me? I’m not a child anymore, Sherlock, I can think for myself!”

“You are a child, and it is my job to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” 

Sherlock opens his mouth to reply, but a door swings open and bangs against the table. Dad has heard us. 

“Go to your room, Rosamund.” Dad says, his quiet fury echoing through the room. 

“What? Dad-”

“Now.”

Most other times I would have left immediately. I have always been a bit scared of Dad, not because he’s ever done anything to me, but because I can see he’s only hanging on to life by a thread and I don’t want to be the one to cut it. However, today I am curious, and I am angry. And angry is a very dangerous thing for a very determined person to be. 

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I’m not leaving until I get a straight answer from one of you. What the hell is going on?”  
“It wasn’t a question Rosamund. Go to your room.”

“Why don’t you trust me? Either of you?”

“It’s not about trust, Rosie, it’s about not getting you hurt.” Sherlock interjected. 

“Shut up, Sherlock, this is my kid and you have already done enough to harm her.”

“There it is again, if you’re so comfortable with it then why can’t you just tell me?”

“I won’t ask again. Go to your room.”

I understand I am pushing it, but I am riled up now.

“How old am I, five?”

Dad looks more angry than I have seen him in a long time. Sherlock steps in front of him. He gives me a Look. 

“Leave it, Rosie.” He says softly. I silently weigh up my options and decide that this is a battle that cannot be won. 

I turn and flounce dramatically out of the room, slamming the door behind me. 

It is one of my better exits.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I don’t have a complete plot structure for this yet but I have an ending worked out so please bear with me! Also, I’m very good at procrastinating even stuff I want to do, but comments and kudos keep me motivated so if you enjoyed it (or not) please let me know. Sorry for the long notes!


End file.
